Pebble Hunting

Sounding the Depths of Each Team's Rotation

The problem is, people get hurt. People get hurt, you’re going to expose your lack of depth. There just is no depth. There is no number six. If Joe Blanton pitches an inning this year it will be just a catastrophe for the Angels and I don’t know—Shoemaker? Is that number six? Even in my ideal world I’m trying to figure out who is number six. —Matt Welch, author of the Angels chapter in this year’s annual, on Effectively Wild.

Every fan thinks his team’s closer is especially shaky, every fan thinks his team’s shortstop should win a Gold Glove, and every fan worries about his team’s starting pitching depth. The last one is with good reason: Since 2000, only 34 teams—about 1.2 per league per year—have had five pitchers make 25 or more starts each in a season. (Of those 34, about 62 percent made the playoffs.) Which means that, as shaky as your favorite team’s fifth starter is, you are overwhelmingly likely to see an extended appearance by the even-shakier sixth starter. And, as Eno Sarris wrote this week, 65 percent of teams will have two starters injured at the same time, which means you and the even-shakier seventh starter are going to be getting acquainted with each other.

The Braves have already seen this happen—fortunately (?) for them, it happened just in time to sign Ervin Santana. What happens for each team if two of its starters get injured in the first week of the season and the sixth and seventh starters are suddenly put into play? An assessment of 30 teams’ sixth and seventh starters, categorized by level of personal tribulation suffered by Frank Grimes:

Methodology: Using BP’s depth charts, and adjusting in only a couple cases to reflect current realities, I identified two pitchers most likely to be called upon in case of injury to current rotation member. Pro-rated each pitcher’s WARP over 165 innings; summed, sorted.

The A’s have two starters in reserve whom PECOTA projects to be considerably more valuable than the Angels’ no. 3, 4, and 5 starters. PECOTA is cautious with Gausman, but it’s not unreasonable to speculate that he could be their best pitcher this year; it’s not inconceivable that any injury to the starting staff could, in a very simple way of doing the arithmetic, actually improve them. Given the bad news they’ve received this month, the Braves’ depth will likely be stretched beyond Garcia and Floyd, and Floyd likely won’t be available until May. However, they start with starting depth a position of strength. As with the A’s and Orioles, an injury or two (if not three) would be more inconvenience than tragedy.

In none of these cases is the season obituary likely to lead with “Everything went downhill after injuries hit the starting rotation.” All the teams could count on reasonable, major-league quality pitching. But each would consider it a heavy inconvenience to lean on this depth, partly because the switches would cannibalize the relief corps and/or move pitchers from a role in which they have excelled into a role in which they have struggled or are unproven. Still, something good could come of it.

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What? No Mets? Normally I would not want to look at an article like this in March since as a Mets fan I need to work very hard to generate any optimism and this may crush it, however, I guess they still belong somewhere...even if you need to create a new category just for them.

Drew Hutchison is all but locked in as the #4 and rightfully so. The #5 will likely come down to a mud wrestling contest between Todd Redmond, Esmil Rogers, and the incumbent J.A. Happ, with the other two as the #6 and #7 options. Not sure how that changes your groupings but up north we're not particularly enthused about any of those three dudes right now.

Interesting that the Red Sox are so far down, most Sox fans I've spoken to have an extremely high level of confidence in the 6th, 7th and even 8th starters that will be called upon. Workman looked great in his 3 starts last summer before the Peavy trade, and the Sox love Allen Webster and will definitely give him another shot for to get a few starts.